Video explores attitudes, outcomes in U.S. and Europe

New data from Europe demonstrate that the number of physician-assisted deaths is increasing. In a research letter in JAMA Internal Medicine, a group reports that the rate of assisted suicide in German-speaking regions of Switzerland more than tripled from 2001 to 2013, when about 2% of all deaths were physician-assisted. An accompanying perspective cites an earlier survey in Belgium that found 46 deaths per 1,000 in 2013 involved assistance.

These numbers, the perspective authors noted, contrast with the U.S. where in Washington and Oregon the rate was 2 per 1,000 deaths. This may be due to the fact that "in Europe, laws and practice about physician assisted death differ considerably from those in the United States." Yet in North America, they wrote, acceptance of euthanasia is growing -- by the end of 2016 more than 80 million people in the U.S. and Canada "will live in a jurisdiction allowing physician-assisted death."

They address the study findings, the differences in physician-assisted death between the U.S. and Europe, and how the growing acceptance of these practices should prompt what the perspective described as an "international call to action."

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